there’s a known medical phenomenon where the longer you work at a Japanese AAA studio the harder it is to conceptualize a game that is neither a visual novel nor a JRPG. consider:

• every Final Fantasy: the JRPG of all time (generally with heavy visual novel elements)
• Shin Megami Tensei: hyper-mega-paintrauma visual novel with JRPG elements
• Persona: this is just Shin Megami Tensei again
• Metaphor: Refantazio: this is just Shin Megami Tensei again
• Fire Emblem: JRPG for people who hate themselves
• Kingdom Hearts: JRPG made by and for people experiencing a manic episode
• NieR games: I’ve never played them but I’m pretty sure they’re paintrauma visual novels with JRPG and bullet hell elements
• Xenoblade: JRPG for people who want angst and suffering but like, maybe not as much as Shin Megami Tensei
• all of the Pokemon games: cockfighting visual novel JRPGs (even the combat mostly consists of reading textboxes and pressing A)
• Soulslike games: I like some of these but let’s be honest, they’re third-person hack-and-slash JRPGs. they have massively overcomplicated RPG systems that even the community doesn’t understand

the only known cure is to force them to work at Nintendo. even then, Nintendo loves their visual novels. they did create Skyward Sword, after all - a game that consists 95% of reading textboxes and pressing A

@kasdeya in our experience nier leans pretty heavily into action-rpg genre conventions more than it does specifically jrpg stuff tbh

I can think of a few exceptions to this tbh, and I’m really glad that some Japanese AAA studios are doing something different. like:

• Death Stranding: actually a new and innovative concept for a game
• Metal Gear Solid games: various kinds of paintrauma stealth games
• Devil May Cry and Bayonetta games: from what I can tell these don’t have too much dialog-box-reading or JRPG number-twiddling, and the gameplay looks pretty fun
• Resident Evil games: I don’t think they ever tried adding JRPG elements to this and I’m pretty sure all of the dialog in these games is voiced, so no scrolling textboxes either (also some of these are really good)

@tempest oh - that’s fair! to be honest I don’t really understand the differences between JRPGs and regular RPGs, so it’s hard for me to make that distinction

@kasdeya so these are famously poorly-defined categories, but the distinction we think best describes the design differences between jrpgs and what we sometimes see called "western" rpgs is in how they handle the player character. jrpgs have more traditionally focused on a character that is already well defined, and the "roleplaying" is less about bringing your own character to the table and more about fitting into the role the game has and making choices from their perspective. western rpgs tend to focus more on the the idea of "making the main character a reflection of yourself"

note that none of this is about the actual interaction mechanics of the game - both have traditionally had stat progression, leveling or item leveling of some sort, both can exist as turn based or action games, etc

so yeah our earlier thought about nier is probably better expressed as "while the roleplaying leans more jrpg than not, we feel it's much more defined as a game by its action-rpg mechanics" — like to us the interesting thing about it is how it tries to be both a third-person hack-and-slash brawler, but also a twin-stick shooter, and it manages to be pretty good at both

@kasdeya but like . . . this kind of analysis does still fall apart in some places — as an example we wouldn't call mass effect a jrpg even though Shephard is absolutely already a well-defined character, so that tells us there's probably more going on we're not realizing or not articulating well

@tempest interesting! I’ve thought a lot about that distinction in the past - between blank-slate characters that allow the player to express themselves, vs. pre-established characters that the game gives you small choices for

although, I’ve mostly thought about that from the perspective of games like New Vegas vs. games like Witcher 3, where in Witcher 3 you play as a well-established character but you decide what he does next, but in New Vegas you can imagine your character as anyone with any personality

I guess I never made that connection to JRPGs because I wasn’t really thinking about JRPGs as games in which people roleplay, if that makes sense. but I don’t really understand the mentality that people come into those games with at all to be honest - I think it must be very very different from how I approach games

also, it’s interesting to imagine a game mixing hack-and-slash and twin-stick shooter elements. that sounds like it could be a weirdly good mix if they could manage to pull it off (which, I guess they did because people love those games lol)